POTTSTOWN — If you have elementary school-age children in the Pottstown School District, you might want to attend Thursday’s Pottstown School Board meeting.

The meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the cafeteria of Pottstown High School.

That’s when the board will hear the formal proposal for redistricting the attendance areas for the four elementary schools that will remain after expansion and renovation projects are complete.

As Robert Stevens, assistant to the superintendent, explained to the board’s finance committee last week, when you go from five schools to four, all the attendance lines have to shift, not just the lines that determined attendance at Edgewood Elementary School, which is slated to be closed.

Advertisement

It will be used to house the Rupert population this year, while that school is renovated and expanded.

Like the current project at Barth, work at Lincoln and Franklin will occur over the summer as well as into the school year.

The project also involves moving the entire fifth grade to the middle school.

Stevens gave an overview of those attendance boundary changes during the Feb. 14 committee meeting, but emphasized nothing is set in stone -- at least not yet.

As a result of re-drawing the lines, done with what school officials called the invaluable help of Pottstown Public Works Director Doug Yerger, each school will hold about 350 students, Stevens said, a move even distribution than exists currently.

In addition to balancing out school populations, another result of redistricting elementary attendance areas is “we cut our busing costs significantly,” Stevens said.

However, in order for those costs to be cut, that means that some students living in the northern portions of the Rupert attendance area will have to cross High Street to get to school.

As a result, the district has applied to PennDOT to have High Street removed from PennDOT’s list of hazardous streets.

That will allow walking students to cross, with the help of crossing guards, Stevens said. Otherwise, should High Street remain designated as a hazardous street, buses would be needed to transport the students across High Street.

The district also plans to adopt a policy of redistricting the elementary attendance areas every 10 years in order to keep the populations at each school balanced.

The proposal will be formally presented to the school board at this Thursday’s school board meeting and Superintendent Jeff Sparagana said the district intends to put the maps up on the district web site subsequently so the public can become familiar with the proposal.

About the Author

Evan Brandt has worked for The Mercury since November 1997. His beat includes Pottstown, the surrounding townships and the Pottstown and Pottsgrove school districts, as well as other varied general topics like politics, the environment and education. Reach the author at ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
or follow Evan on Twitter: @PottstownNews.